서비스 실패 상황에서 고객 귀인과 반추가 고객분노 및 부정적 구전에 미치는 영향: 서비스 복구 노력의 조절 효과 = The Effects of Customer Attribution and Rumination on Customer Anger and Negative Word-of-Mouth in Service Failure Situations: The Moderating Role of Service Recovery Efforts

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This study examined how customers’ attributions in salesperson-related service failure situations influence customer anger and negative word-of-mouth intentions through rumination, and whether service recovery effort moderates these relationships. Although prior research has explained post-failure responses through attribution theory or emotion-centered models, limited attention has been given to the sequential pathway linking attribution, rumination, emotion, and behavior. To address this gap, this study tested an attribution–rumination–emotion–behavior mechanism using structural equation modeling based on survey data from 250 adults who had experienced a salesperson-related service failure within the past three months. The results showed that effort and ability attributions positively affected event-focused rumination, whereas task difficulty and bad luck attributions significantly affected self-focused rumination. Event-focused rumination significantly increased customer anger, whereas self-focused rumination did not. Customer anger, in turn, significantly increased negative word-of-mouth intention. The moderation analysis revealed that service recovery effort weakened the positive effect of event-focused rumination on customer anger. However, contrary to the hypothesis, anger tended to increase under high recovery effort when customers engaged in self-focused rumination. These findings suggest that service recovery effort does not operate uniformly across rumination types and that emotional outcomes depend on customers’ cognitive processing patterns. This study contributes to the service failure literature by integrating attribution and rumination into a sequential framework and by highlighting the need for differentiated recovery strategies according to rumination type.